The first annual meeting of The Johns Hopkins Protein Folding Meeting, partially sponsored by the Biocalorimetry Center, was held at the Coolfont Conference Center in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, on 17-19 March, 1996. The aim of the meeting is to promote open and informal communication of frontier developments on all aspects of the protein folding problem, including contributions from experimentalists, physically oriented theoreticians, and those interested in computer based algorithms. The meeting was attended by 140 participants and divided in six sessions, dedicated to: Experimental Detection of Folding Intermediates Chairs: S. Doniak and K. Hodgson The Folding Reaction Chairs: R. Baldwin and L. Gierasch Prediction Methods Chairs: D. Eisenberg and S. Wodak Thermodynamics Chairs: E. Freire and P. Privalov Present Status of the Folding Problem Chairs: W. Englander and N. Kallenbach Anfinsen Memorial Lecture: A Few Paradoxes of Protein Folding Speaker: Ken Dill